ANTOINE LE GRAND AND JACQUES ROHAULT:
LE GRAND AND HIS ANNOTATIONS TO ROHAULT’S TREATISE ON NATURAL PHILOSOPHY
Mihnea DOBRE*
Ioana BUJOR**
1. General introduction
Scholars reading early modern texts are by now aware that some primary sources are forgotten, that some historical figures become neglected, and that some early printed works – not to mention manuscript sources – are only rarely requested by readers in libraries across the world. Reasons leading to this situation are diverse, ranging from the availability of primary sources to the rather conservative canonical lists of authors promoted by traditional histories and narratives in various disciplines. The current edition of Antoine Le Grand‘s annotations to a treatise on natural philosophy, written by Jacques Rohault, illustrates well such a case of historical disregard of an early modern source. It is not about a forgotten figure – Jacques Rohault or Antoine Le Grand – but about a text, which is not studied anymore and only rarely mentioned in the secondary literature, despite its significance in the early modern period.1 For a number of years, (at least) between 1682 and 1696, the edition of Rohault‘s book, with Le Grand‘s annotations, circulated widely in England and The Netherlands, and was used as a university textbook at Cambridge.
In 1671, Jacques Rohault published his Traité de physique, a two-volume book covering most of the main aspects of a natural philosophical system.2 The book was considered a Cartesian treatise, dealing in its four parts with the most general problems in natural philosophy (part I), cosmology (part II), the earthly and meteorological phenomena (part III), and the living body (part IV).3 The publication occurred only one year before Rohault‘s death in 1672, but the content of the treatise was relatively well-known, as it was presented in public conferences for more than a decade. Rohault was a professor of mathematics who performed experiments in Paris, and became a reputed Cartesian in the mid-1660s. His fame as a lecturer ensured a quick dissemination of his natural philosophical views, such that his treatise was soon translated into Latin and published first in Geneva (1674), followed by other places (Figure 1).4